


An unwelcome Visitor

by thismaz



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-14
Updated: 2011-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-19 09:45:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thismaz/pseuds/thismaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander overhears Anya talking in the Magic Box. Set early to mid season 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An unwelcome Visitor

Xander stepped back, inspected the job and nodded to himself. Twirling the screwdriver between his fingers he slotted it back into its loop on his tool belt with a flourish; like a gunslinger in the Saturday morning matinee movies of his childhood, holstering his weapon after he'd shot the bad guy in the middle of Main Street. Now Anya would be able to unpack the latest consignment of herbs and jars of animal parts, and get them off the floor at the bottom of the stairs. He slowly turned around on the spot, studying the rest of the basement, calculating if any additional shelves could still be fitted in. Maybe if the table were moved under the stairs he could squeeze one more row of racking into the space, but it would leave only very narrow aisles between. He shrugged; deliveries still came in and they needed somewhere to stand until they could be put away. Anya was right, having them at the bottom of the stairs was a fire hazard. There was the possibility of one more, short row against the far wall, but after that the basement of the Magic Box would be full to capacity. He gathered his tools together and packed them away. Taking off his tool-belt he slung it over his shoulder, picked up his toolbox and made his way up the stairs and into the shop.

Closing the basement door behind him, he hesitated before going to tell Anya he was done and the new shelving unit was ready for use. His shirt was stained with sweat and sticking to him and the knees of his jeans were dirty where he'd knelt on the floor to fix the bolts through the concrete. It was honest dirt, but he didn't want to embarrass her in front of potential customers, so he put his toolbox down and edged forwards until he could peer around the corner of the wall to see if she was alone.

She wasn't. She was standing in her usual place by the cash register talking to a youngish looking man in a business suit. They were on opposite sides of the counter but were both leaning on their elbows so their faces were all too close and she was laughing - that bright, all-encompassing laugh that lit up the room. Her visitor didn't look like a customer and he wasn't anyone Xander recognised. The desire not to look like a total dork in front of someone so well dressed warred with his jealous urge to publicly stake his claim on his fiancée. Hurriedly he tucked his shirt tails into his waistband and flapped the open collar of his shirt in an attempt to get some cooling air inside, between the cloth and his skin.

"We're getting married," she said. "It's so exciting. It's a rite of passage. With gifts."

The man murmured something and Anya smiled. "Yes, Xander is kind and thoughtful."

Taking a deep breath, Xander prepared to join them but Anya's next words halted him. "Although he tries too hard; to make up for the fact that he's so ordinary."

Xander froze. He couldn't hear what the man replied. He just got an impression of a rich, warm voice pitched at an intimate level. Anya was clearly audible though. "But that's only because his friends are all special. At least they think so."

Leaning back against the wall, Xander wondered what he should do. Leave them alone? Charge in and disrupt them, embarrassing himself by making it clear he'd heard her judgment of him?

His pride in his craftsmanship of a few moments before wavered under the damning power of her words. It was a legacy of Toth's spell that he remembered being both the confident, competent man who understood his work and knew how to direct others to get the job done, on time and on budget, and the bumbling incompetent who tripped over his own feet, spilt his drink down his shirt and could never make the right decision under pressure. The knowledge that suave Xander was there inside usually gave him the confidence to take the challenges of his job and make them work. He even did it with a smile on his face, which, he'd found, reassured his bosses and confirmed their opinion of him as someone they could trust. But the bumbling idiot was in there too and at moments like this he seemed to come into his own. Xander realised he was shaking. He rolled his shoulders along the wall, back to the edge, and poked his head around so he could hear them again. Anya was still talking. "Xander helps Buffy, even though it's Buffy's job. He shouldn't do that. It's dangerous. He could get hurt very easily. Humans are very fragile, you know."

Her visitor said something else that Xander couldn't hear. "Me? No. Ex Demon here. Emphasis on the 'ex'."

Xander loved Anya. And she loved him back. That was one thing in his crazy life he'd thought he knew. He loved her so much he'd asked her to marry him, even though there were whole days when the idea of getting married terrified him beyond anything.

Listening to Anya talking about him, practical, matter-of-fact Anya, confiding in a stranger things she'd never said to his face... He poked his head around the corner again and her next words even brought the assumption that it was a stranger she was talking to into question. "Yes. I see you're here," she said, obviously replying to something the man had said. She walked out from behind the counter. "You say you've changed?"

The man stood up and turned to face her so his back was to Xander, but he was speaking more clearly now and Xander could hear his reply. "I have changed."

"Well I can see that, buddy. You're a vampire, for one thing."

A vampire? Suddenly Xander understood. He started forward, alarmed, but Anya caught his eye over her visitor's shoulder. She didn't appear surprised to see him, simply frowned at him and shook her head. Xander stopped.

The vampire started to turn around to see what she was looking at but she dragged his attention back to her. "So let me get this straight," she said. "You decided that being plain old Ivan the Black, corrupt abbot and devil worshipping ruler of a few villages wasn't enough for you, so you went and got yourself turned? "

She walked towards him, her hands clasped behind her back and her head cocked to one side as she gazed up into his face with that eager, birdlike expression she used whenever she wanted appear interested in what she was hearing. Her visitor lifted his arms and Xander could imagine him hitching at the lapels of his jacket. "It wasn't quite like that," he demurred.

Anya ignored the interruption, continuing her train of thought, "And now you've come to Sunnydale, because you want to conquer the world and you think that opening the Hellmouth is the best way to do that?"

Carefully Xander began to creep forwards, placing his feet heel first and rolling forward onto the ball, step by step, avoiding the floorboards he knew would creak under his weight. If he could grab the man around the neck from behind, he thought, he could pull him over and give Anya a chance to escape. It was a mystery why vampires were incapacitated by being throttled, since they didn't need to breathe, but he'd seen it often enough to know that it was true. He reached the two steps leading down into the back of the shop and glanced up. Anya again caught his eye and again she frowned at him fiercely, warning him away. "So why come here?" She asked. "Why come and see me?"

"I didn't know you were here," the vampire replied. "Until I saw you, and then I couldn't believe my eyes." He lifted his arms away from his sides in a gesture that invited her to join him in the pleasure of the coincidence'. "We had some fun, didn't we, back in the day?" he asked. "We could do that again." Xander could hear the smile in his voice. Anya smiled back, encouraging him to continue, "You shouldn't waste yourself on some ordinary carpenter..."

"Foreman," Anya corrected.

The vampire shrugged. "It's the same thing. You said yourself, he's nothing special. You could come away with me? We could do great things together."

Anya frowned and her voice was firm, correcting his misinterpretation. "I said he was ordinary. I never said he was nothing special." Her eyes flicked past Ivan the Black and back again to his face. "Xander is brave and sexy and kind and honest and strong." Her frown transformed into a glare. "And in spite of being ordinary he's been beating on plain old ordinary evil like you since he was a kid. And," she paused, looked past the vampire to catch Xander's eye again, "he's here, " She finished triumphantly.

The vampire began to turn and Xander broke into a run in the hope of still catching him by surprise. He was three feet away and the vampire had just seen him when Anya's right arm shot up from behind her back and she plunged her stake into the vampire's chest. He shuddered under the blow, his mouth opening in shocked surprise and he began to turn back towards her. He never completed the move. Everything seemed to slow down and Xander could swear he saw the vampire's skin turn grey, begin to crack and then crumble to dust, leaving a shadow impression of his skeleton for a moment, hanging in the air, before that too dispersed.

Anya looked up. "That's the trouble with conquerors," she said. "Arrogant. And with delusions of invincibility." She went over to the store cupboard and pulled out a dustpan and broom. Staring sternly down at the remains of Ivan the Black she nodded her head decisively. "But there's nothing invincible about a pile of dust."

Xander smiled to himself, 'that's my girl', he thought. Walking over to her, he took the broom from her and let it fall to the floor. Cupping her face between his hands he bent down and kissed her softly. "I do love you," he said.

Anya looked up at him, misty eyed. "And I love you too, Xander Harris," she replied. She stepped back. "So let me tidy up this mess, then you can show me the wonderful job you've done with my new shelves. I need somewhere to store more oryx spleen. It's ridiculous the price people will pay for that, even when I tell them it won't work in a love spell."

Smiling, Xander let her go.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in July 2008 for tamingthemuse Prompt: 105 - Conqueror.
> 
> Comments are greatly appreciated, loved and cherished, here or [at my Livejournal](http://thismaz.livejournal.com/37555.html)


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